


To Be the Prey

by letsgostealafandom



Category: Leverage
Genre: Blackmail, Eliot hates himself, Established Relationship, I'm kinda sorry this time, Id Fic, Multi, The things Eliot did for Moreau, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 19:04:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3821422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letsgostealafandom/pseuds/letsgostealafandom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a blackmailer threatens to release videos of Eliot's work with Moreau to Parker and Hardison, Eliot figures doing a few side jobs is worth keeping the blackmailer quiet. When it turns out keeping quiet isn't part of the blackmailer's end game, Eliot finds his life crumbling down around him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be the Prey

**Author's Note:**

> > ELIOT: You think you know what I’ve done? The worst thing I ever did in my entire life I did for Damien Moreau. And I … I’ll never be clean of that.  
> PARKER: What did you do?  
> ELIOT: Don’t ask me that, Parker. Because if you ask me, I’m gonna tell you. So please … don’t ask me.
> 
>   
> Okay but what if. WHAT IF someone made a video from security feeds and thing of the worst things Eliot's done for Moreau? Someone with a grudge against Eliot, maybe? WHAT THEN?
> 
> This is what then.
> 
> Trigger warnings at the end! You should probably read them. The graphic depictions of violence are more graphic than the show but not terribly graphic compared to other shows.
> 
> Also: thank yous to both my beta for making this infinitely better than it was, and to my friends for letting me bounce this idea off them.

The thing was, Eliot knew how blackmail went. He wasn’t an expert at doing it, but when you were in his business long enough, you picked up enough to know how it works. Find your mark’s sore spot; start with relatively low stakes. Then, when the mark was comfortable with that -- as comfortable as anyone ever gets being blackmailed -- raise the stakes a little bit. Another thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand dollars. Rinse, repeat, like a goddamn frog in a pot of water slowly being brought to a boil.

It was a balancing act. Because as soon as that water got too hot, either the frog was out of there or it was dead, and either way your mark wasn’t giving up the goods anymore. It was a matter of being skilled enough to find the line and stay just a hair away from it. Too much, and suddenly the threat of exposure wasn’t worth the amount of cash being dropped every month, or the favors being asked, or whatever was being used for payment. Everyone had a tipping point.

Eliot was relying on that now, as he forced his fists to unclench and lay flat on the armrests of the chair. He was relying on the knowledge that everyone had a tipping point and they wouldn’t want to reach his because it’d make him dangerous, relying on it to keep them from going too far. Because the truth was, for this, to keep the videos of himself that they were showing him away from Parker and Hardison, he would do anything. _Anything_.

If this were something else, anything else, he could tell them to go fuck themselves and call up Hardison. The backup copies would disappear, the original would disappear; there would be no evidence, anywhere, that they had ever existed in the first place. Eliot could take down the guys threatening him, Parker could provide an escape route, it’d all turn out fine. But.

But he couldn’t take the risk that one of them would get curious, wonder what he was hiding, and watch--

His throat tightened and he raised his head, still able to see the tear-stained face of the little girl, could still see her clutching her bear out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t flinch when a second mouth opened in her throat, wide and red and gouting blood, just met the eyes of the smiling man behind the desk and rasped, “What do you want?”

The smiling man was vaguely familiar, in the way that everyone from his life Before was. Eliot couldn’t place him, wasn’t even sure that he was actually familiar and not just a guy with one of those faces, until the smiling man said, “Can’t quite place me, can you, Spencer?” and Eliot was forced to shrug.

He refused to ask again what they wanted in exchange for keeping the past in the past, instead waiting them out.

After a moment, the smiling man, his smile widening and filling with what Eliot was half sure was too many teeth, continued. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it will come back to you. As for what I want from you...”

Eliot only half listened as the video clips start to play again from the beginning, the nagging familiarity forgotten as all the things Eliot was terrified Parker or Hardison would find out about began flashing across the screen again, starting with Nasirabad and ending with the fucking mess in the outskirts of Goiânia.

It turned out that what they wanted was pretty simple -- and the word catches in his throat, choking him -- just someone to do a few jobs for them, when the need arises. Nothing major, they said, and Eliot can taste the lie in the stuffy office air, thick with the scent of expensive cologne. Just a few days here and there.

“A few days here and there,” the smiling man said, “and no one you... _care about_ need see your greatest hits.”

“Okay,” Eliot said, taking the burner off the desktop with numb fingers and slipping it into his pocket. “I’ll do it.”

He made it almost all the way back to his apartment before he needed to jerk his truck to the side of the road and throw up. What he really wanted was to turn the truck around and head to the brewpub, to climb the stairs to the loft and ask if he could stay the night with them. What he really wanted was to be surrounded by the smells and sounds and Parker and Hardison’s stupidly domestic life until his heart stopped pounding and his mouth stopped feeling so dry and gritty and everything was okay again. He wanted it to be one of the rare nights that they smiled at him and pulled him into their bedroom, nights he could never predict.

What he did instead was slam the truck’s door shut and continue to his apartment. What he _did_ was go back to an empty set of rooms that barely smelled like anyone lived there at all, with an empty fridge and an emptier bedroom. He wasn't there enough lately for it to bother him -- he'd been spending all his time at the brewpub -- but right that second, it was making his skin crawl. It was all he could do not to scream his anger and fear out to the empty walls, then text Hardison and beg to let him come over to the brewpub for the night. But Eliot couldn’t take the thought that this would be the one time, the first time, Hardison said no. Instead, he booted up his laptop and opened up some facial recognition software Hardison had installed on it.

Eliot wasn’t stupid. He might play the dumb muscle, but he knew his way around the basic tools of each of their trades, little things he'd picked up over the six years they'd been a team. He’d already run the name through a search when the smiling man asked to meet and had come up up with nothing. With a nice, clear headshot from the traffic camera outside the office building they’d met at, he could add facial recognition software to the mix.

None of the aliases that came back were anyone he would have crossed paths with. It would have been so much easier to involve Hardison, get some real digging done, but he just couldn’t. Parker you could tell to back off, and she would. She understood what it meant to have secrets that you couldn’t tell people, couldn’t tell anyone, even people you’d trust with your life and more. Hardison, though. Once Hardison knew there was something there to unravel, he picked at things until he was left with just a mess of string.

The first job wasn’t that bad, just taking out the security at a warehouse so other guys could get in. Eliot didn’t want to know what they did inside. He'd made sure Parker and Hardison knew he would be unavailable for a while, had told them a buddy of his needed help with a security gig, the lie tasting sour in his mouth.

“Has it come back to you yet?” the smiling man had asked afterward, pearly white teeth flashing in dim light of the office, and Eliot shook his head. “Ah, well, another time.”

It wasn’t too awful for a while. The first jobs were all like that, all little things, all ending with the smiling man asking if Eliot remembered who he was, and Eliot shrugging his shoulders. The recognition software he had on his laptop still wasn’t picking up anything usable. The smiling man never looked disappointed when Eliot had to admit that he still couldn’t place him, just smiled and nodded. Then a few weeks later, he'd call and Eliot would go out on another job.

“Is your friend in trouble?” Parker asked one night while he was chopping up onions for the risotto he was making. Her fingers pressed against the bruise on his shoulder where a lucky punch had landed. Her touch was firm enough that he winced, but not hard enough to make him push her away. Never hard enough for that.

“No,” he said, the knife hitting the cutting board evenly, his rhythm not stuttering, even when she pressed harder and then backed away, leaving his head feeling light.

“Do you need our help?” Parker asked. It was tempting, so tempting to say yes, so tempting to have them help him fix things, but-

“No,” he said sharply, and then turned to look at her, pausing his chopping and forcing a smile. “It’s fine.”

She dropped it, thankfully, hopping up on the counter and kicking her feet against the cabinets while he swept the onions into the skillet. His arm brushed her thigh when he started crushing garlic, and he knew, he _knew_ he should move away, should tell her to move away, but. If this was what they were willing to give him, this was what he would take.

The jobs got bigger. It was still okay. The way the smiling man kept asking if he’d recognized him yet was driving him nuts. The way he was sure the man’s name was just out of reach in his memory didn’t help, but it was fine. It wasn’t until the jobs get even bigger -- big enough that he could’ve really used someone he trusted to watch his back -- that he got desperate. Parker was starting to ask pointed questions about his friend, and Hardison was starting to shoot him concerned looks when he thought Eliot wasn’t watching. That only solidified his need to try to find out more than what the software on his computer was giving him.

He was through half of the desk and still nothing when a shadow drifted past the glass door, and he had one foot out of the window before he saw the guys on the ground. The smiling man’s guy’s on the ground.

“Has it come back to you yet?” the smiling man asked as he entered the room.

Eliot slowly drew his leg back in the window, teeth grinding as he shook his head. He could probably take the smiling man, creepy teeth and all, but any blackmailer worth their salt had a backup plan.

“You have a choice,” the smiling man said, standing just inside the doorway. Hired muscle #3 loomed behind him, smiling and cracking his knuckles. “We can release the video to your... _friends_ now-” the breath caught in Eliot’s throat at the sheer panic that filled him, and he could see the smiling man noticing, the smile growing wider until pointed incisors poked out “-or we can break your fingers. Your choice.”

Even through the pain, and the sick feeling of his fingers snapping like twigs, even after a fist slammed into the side of his head and the next time he opened his eyes he was being dumped out of a moving van down by the docks, all he could feel was relief that _that’s all_. They wouldn’t be releasing the videos just because he was too fucking stupid not to get caught.

Hardison fussed over him when he showed up at their place the next night for movies and beer, and Parker told him that he couldn’t cook like that so they were getting takeout. Neither of them asked what happened. He was glad.

He was.

He watched the way they were so easy in each other’s spaces now, the way Parker’d softened since they started dating, the way Hardison’d learned to move around her, giving her space when she needed it. Eliot refused to be jealous, because he was _there_ , he was there and they were letting him watch movies with them and cook for them (most of the time) and sleep with them (once in a while) and they weren’t throwing him out on his ass even though his hands were so soaked in blood he knew the stains would never come out.

He was lulled by the easy rhythm of it. Movies once a week, dinner as often as he felt he could make it for them without intruding, laughter and companionship and forcing the swells of jealousy aside, side jobs once a month or so that make him want to claw his own throat out. All in all, it was an okay life.

So, really, he shouldn’t have been too surprised when it all went to shit.

He’d come back from another side job a day early. He was in the usual debrief with the smiling man, and it clicked. It was fucking Lenny Crispich. Lenny Crispich, who got a bit too ambitious while working for Moreau. Lenny fucking Crispich, who had ended up in the ICU after Eliot had worked him over on Moreau's orders.

The creepy smile made sense now; the plastic and oral surgeons had done a good job. You couldn’t tell that Eliot had knocked out all his teeth, broken his nose, sliced his face to ribbons.

“Ah,” Lenny said, in the middle of a question. “ _There’s_ the look I’ve been waiting for. You can go.”

“I can... go?” Eliot said, because usually Lenny had him recount the job in excruciating detail, like Lenny was getting off on it, and Eliot wasn’t even halfway through.

Lenny clacked a few buttons on his computer, then smiled wider at Eliot, the grin taking up half his smug face. “I’ve been waiting for you to realize who I am, so you know exactly who ruined your life.”

And that- What the fuck? That didn’t make any sense. His life was harder, yeah, but it wasn’t even close to ruined, not while he still had Parker and Hardison, and-

The blood drained from his face as he realized what Lenny must mean. He knocked over the chair in his haste to get out, the sound of Lenny’s hyena laughter following him through the hall. If a single fucking hair on Parker’s or Hardison’s head was hurt, he was gonna come back and Lenny would fucking wish Moreau had let Eliot beat him to death all those years ago.

Both of their phones were ringing through to voicemail. He coaxed as much extra speed out of his truck as he could, swerving around cars that were going too slow and hitting the ground running when he squealed to a stop in front of the brewpub, the smell of burnt rubber clogging his nose.

The lights were on upstairs, and the door was unlocked, and jesus, he had never been so fucking glad to see them. They were hunched in front of one of Hardison’s ridiculous computers, completely unharmed.

“Hey, man, you’re home early!” Hardison was saying with a grin, half-turned in his chair, when what was coming from the laptop speaker registered with Eliot. He recognized those noises, the quiet sobbing and the slick sound of flesh rubbing through blood and the laughter and the patter of the rain that had never fucking stopped, and Eliot had thought that them being murdered was the thing that would ruin his life most completely but this-

But this.

It punched a broken sound from deep in his throat. Parker was turning, her eyes wide and horrified and he couldn’t-- He couldn’t--

He turned and ran like a coward because he couldn’t face the horrified stares, the grimace on Hardison’s face, the words he knew were coming. Fucking videos, fucking Lenny, _fucking Goiânia_. He got in his truck and peeled out, breath hitching in his chest, turned off his phone when it started to buzz because he couldn’t-- He _couldn’t_.

He slammed into his apartment, barely remembering to lock the door behind him, his eyes burning, and headed straight for the bathroom, kicking off his boots on the way, turning the water on as hot and hard as it went before stepping into the spray fully clothed as a sob tore itself loose from his chest. This was so, so much worse.

When he finally peeled out of his sodden clothes, the water had run cold and he was shivering. His fingers were wrinkled and he was finally so fucking cold that he couldn’t think about Parker’s horrified face anymore, of the look that must’ve been in Hardison’s eyes when he turned, the look that Eliot had been too goddamn relieved to notice until it was too late.

Once he dragged his body out of the freezing water, he collapsed on his bed, shivering. He felt so fucking stupid. This was something he should've been preparing for all along instead of just hoping that things wouldn’t ever go wrong and they’d never find out. The last thing he should've been doing was getting comfortable in their lives, slotting himself in next to them and letting his guard down around them and getting used to their fucking friendship, to lazy movie nights and Parker playing with his hair and Hardison's hugs.

He should’ve been waiting for the day Hardison got too curious and dug further into his background, because once that happened, well. You couldn’t do the things he’d done without people wanting you as far away from themselves as possible at best, and out of the equation entirely at worst.

He got as far as realizing that he was probably going to have to leave Portland, that they probably wouldn’t want him in the same state as them, never mind the same city, before it became too much and he just. Stopped, for a while. Stopped thinking, stopped being. He wasn’t sleeping, but he wasn’t entirely conscious either and that was-- That was good.

In the morning -- after a night of restless half-sleep and waking dreams where it was Hardison in Nasirabad, Parker an Al Mahwit, both of them in Goiânia, their blood soaking him and their cries and begging in his ears and their dead eyes staring up at him accusingly -- he turned his phone back on so he could call in a favor and start moving his life as far away from them as possible. It started buzzing immediately with voicemails and texts, and he got as far as seeing, “we’re sorry but-” go crawling across the notification bar before he hurled it against the wall. It kept buzzing with incoming messages even as it landed, face up, the glass face cracked into a spiderweb of fissures.

He didn't need to actually see the messages to fill in the rest. They’re sorry, but they don’t want him around anymore. They’re sorry, but he needs to come pick up the stuff he left at their place. They’re sorry, but he needs to leave. They’re sorry, but he’s become their latest job and it was only some leftover sense of obligation that they were giving him a warning before coming after him.

They’re fucking sorry, but they’re good people at heart and he never should have thought he could pretend to be like them.

He left the phone where it was, grabbed his keys and wallet, and left. Just got in his truck and drove, his breath coming faster and heart pounding harder as he neared the city limits. It felt like something was being crushed inside him as he crossed the border into the next town over, but he didn’t let himself stop, just kept driving. What the fuck had he been thinking?

He wasn’t the sort of guy to get happy endings, wasn’t the guy who could expect friends to stick around too long, wasn’t the guy who could lie to himself and tell himself he’d got people that were gonna stick around without expecting it all to come tumbling down in the blink of an eye.

He drove east. When he got too tired to see straight, he pulled over and took naps in the truck. While he slept, he dreamed about the hatred Parker and Hardison must’ve been feeling right about then, dreamed about the hate taking physical form and trailing after him, infecting the air he was breathing and seeping into his pores until there was no part of him that didn’t hurt.

He woke up shaking and got back on the road, aware that he was running, and knowing that he should have stopped and let them do to him what they would, knowing that he should have tried to be a good person, at least, and give them whatever they wanted for closure. Even if what they wanted was to carve him up, piece by piece, to listen to him scream and run their fingers through the blood and stuff his mouth with them until he was choking on the taste of his own mortality.

But he _was_ giving them what they wanted, he told himself. They wouldn’t have to see him again, wouldn’t have to think about him again. They could forget about him like he was a bad dream.

It only took him a day and a half to make it to New York, to lose himself in crowded streets and abandon his truck to airport parking, to buy a ticket on the first flight overseas going out. It would take him to Nairobi, where he could buy a car and go north to Omdurman, where the weather was nothing like Portland and there would be nothing to remind him of what he’d never had to begin with.

Once he hit Omdurman, he rented the first apartment he found, small and cheap and on the outskirts of the city. He shopped at the tiny market down the street and avoided the neighbors. He got used to the desert heat and the burning sun again, didn’t think about curling up on one end of the couch with Parker and Hardison on the other end as rain drizzled down the windows because there was never rain to remind him.

He didn’t think about how much Parker would love the spicy goat meat he made when the heat of the day had died down, or how Hardison would bitch and bitch about it not being something salty and unhealthy, but sneak seconds when he thought Eliot wasn’t looking.

He didn’t think about Hardison complaining about wifi reception and sand ruining his electronics, and Parker complaining that there was nowhere good to rob and she was getting bored. He especially didn’t think about how much she would love the market on the other side of town.

He didn’t think about everything he'd left behind because, really, it was never his to begin with. They had let him into their lives the way you let an alley cat inside when it was raining before kicking it out again when it turned out it had fleas.

He’d been there two months when the shitty phone he'd bought three weeks in -- just in case, he'd told himself, trying not to think too deeply on in case of what -- rang. A number he didn’t recognize flashed across the front. He answered it reluctantly, sure that someone had tracked him down for a job offer. 

"Hello?" he said.

“Eliot?”

It was Hardison's voice, and Eliot dropped the phone, stringing together a whole line of curses.

His heart was pounding so hard he could feel his eyes throbbing with it, but he picked the phone back up and the first thing he said wasn’t, “God, I missed your voice,” or, “How’s Parker?” or even, “Please, please let me come home,” because it was never his home to begin with. It was, “How’d you find me?”

“Um,” Hardison said, and Eliot knew that um. He knew that Hardison was about to say something he wouldn’t like, and growled out, “Dammit, Hardison,” more out of habit than anything, because he didn’t have that right anymore.

“You were never really missing to being with? I mean, you didn’t try very hard to hide your trail and--”

Eliot interrupted before Hardison could get going, suddenly more tired than he’d ever felt in his life, because-- “You don’t gotta do that,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m not gonna--” except, what? He wasn’t going to go back to torturing people on his boss’ say-so? He wasn’t going to go back to making husbands and wives watch while his dick slid through bleeding flesh because that was what Moreau wanted and you always, _always_ did what Moreau wanted? He didn’t know that, _couldn’t_ know that, because he wasn’t the kind of guy who got to say no when he was given orders, and there was always another Moreau needing someone like him. It was only a matter of time before someone tracked him down and gave him a reason to work for them.

“We--” Hardison stopped and cleared his throat. “We know you’re mad, but--”

“You know I’m _mad_?” Eliot bit out, flailing an arm behind himself until he caught the back of a chair and collapsed into it, the words Hardison was saying not really registering because _what_.

“Furious, whatever,” Hardison said, and Eliot would call his tone dismissive if it didn’t sound like he was being so, so careful not to be. “And we’re trying to give you space--”

“Give me _space_?” he repeated, his head buzzing and air whistling in and out of his lungs too fast, too fast. Because this couldn’t be--

“You just gonna repeat everything I’m saying or you gonna let me fucking apologize?” Hardison snapped, and Eliot couldn’t help the faint, “apologize?” that escaped.

He felt dizzy, and he didn’t know why, didn’t know what Hardison was getting at, couldn’t process what Hardison was getting at because this was all wrong.

“Look,” Hardison was saying while Eliot hyperventilated just a little bit. “When are you coming home? We need to talk, and I don’t want to do this over the phone. I mean, I can get Parker and we _can_ do this over the phone if you’d rather, if you’re not- But we’d really, really like it if you came home.”

Eliot’s breathing was harsh, great lungfuls of air tearing out of his throat. It wasn’t home, it was never home, he had just tricked himself into thinking that it was. He tricked himself into thinking that he could have a place full of good things and good people and-

“Eliot?” Hardison was saying, sounding concerned. “You okay, man?”

“Do _what_ over the phone?” Eliot choked out, because if he were them, he’d much rather tell him that they never wanted to see him again over the phone. Hell, he’d made it as easy as possible for them to move on without ever having to tell him, although he guessed that they wanted to make sure that he understood, that he wasn’t going to show up again one day and try to-

“We know we violated your trust in a huge way,” Hardison was saying slowly, carefully, sounding rehearsed and Eliot couldn’t fucking breathe anymore, but still managed to get out, “ _You_ violated _my_ trust?”

“Yeah,” Hardison said. “When we realized what it was, we should’ve stopped and, you know--”

“But you wouldn’t _tell us_ ,” and oh, that’s Parker, and christ, he missed the both of them so fucking much, “and we wanted to know, so--”

“I--” Eliot choked out, but didn’t know where he was going with it until he says, the words rough and ripped from his throat, surprising himself, “I can come h-- back?”

The line was quiet for a minute, and he was suddenly terrified that he wasn’t understanding them, that that wasn’t what they meant and he was too raw to take it if they said no, too open and exposed and it would kill him, he knew it.

“Yeah,” Parker says, finally. “Come _home_. Don’t make us come get you; Hardison doesn’t like it when sand gets in his phone.”

He choked out a laugh that sounded, even to himself, perilously close to a sob.

“I gotta go,” he said and hung up before they can say anything else, and put his head between his knees until he wasn’t dizzy anymore, until it didn’t feel like his world was crumbling down and he didn’t mind.

He didn’t really start to panic, staying numb and shut down to keep himself from hoping, until he hit PDX and realized that he had nowhere to go and nothing to get him there. Realized that he wasn’t sure they meant it, that maybe the entire call was a vivid dream, that this could be a trap of some kind and, yeah, for them, he would walk willingly into it, but he’d still like to know it was there first.

He was still trying to decide what to do when a familiar truck pulled to a stop in front of him and Parker was hanging out the window, grinning and saying, “We stole your truck,” and, “It was getting expensive to keep it in New York,” and, “Get in.”

He got in. They were both grinning at him like idiots and he couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand the tight feeling in his chest and the adrenaline coursing through him and the way they were looking at him like they fucking missed him as much as he’d let himself miss them.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said, closing his eyes and bracing himself because he couldn’t let himself believe that they’d just, what? Forgive him? Tell him it was okay, and he was a different person now, and they didn’t care that he was still a monster, didn't care that he could never make up for the things he'd done?

“We’re sorry,” Parker says, and his eyes snapped open. “You trusted us to leave your past alone, and we didn’t, and that was really, really bad of us.”

“You--” his voice was strangled and he had to clear his throat. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I should’ve told you, so you could--” his voice broke and he stopped, swallowing hard.

“So we could what?” Hardison sounded honestly curious, even as he was pulling onto the highway.

Parker was watching him patiently, and he had to close his eyes again.

“So you could decide what to do with me,” he forced out around the lump in his throat.

“What to--”

His eyes flew open and he grabbed the dashboard as Hardison swerved across two lanes into the breakdown lane and threw the truck into park. He sounded furious, and Eliot made himself not cringe, made himself stay still and strong, ready for whatever they were going to do to him.

That turned out to be a lie, because when Hardison said, “You’re so _stupid_ sometimes,” and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him halfway across Parker, he wasn't ready for Hardison’s mouth to crush against his, wasn't ready for Parker’s hand on the back of his neck and her delighted noise. Hardison’s tongue swiped across Eliot's lips but before he could get his wits gathered enough to respond, Hardison was shoving him against the seat, putting the truck back in gear, and pulling smoothly back onto the highway.

“What to _do with you_ , Jesus.” Hardison still sounded furious, but Eliot was reeling from the feel of his lips and the way Parker hadn’t moved her hand and was eying him consideringly, and he couldn’t-- He couldn’t--

“Here’s what we’re gonna do with you,” Hardison was saying, and Eliot forced himself to concentrate on the words. “We’re gonna go home, and we’re gonna strip you down, and we’re gonna make sure you understand just how sorry we are and how fucking much we missed you, and-”

Eliot’s brain whited out at the thought of what Hardison was saying, a pleasant buzzing filling his skull, and then Parker was turning his head toward her and kissing him, and the next thing he knew, they were pulling up in front of the brewpub and then they were tugging him upstairs.

“Are you okay with this?” Hardison asked while Parker unlocked the door. Eliot wanted to ask what, exactly, “this” was. Was this them having sex before sending him on his way? Was this just a pity fuck, misplaced sympathy for a damned man? Was this a moment of weakness before they started treating him like the mark he should've been, or something--

He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against Hardison’s before he could finish that thought. He didn’t care, didn’t care what they were offering after the next half hour. Maybe if he had this one last time it would be enough, and he would finally have them out of his system.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough with want, the edge of fear that this was going to be the last thing he experienced just heightening his arousal. “I’m good.”

“Come on,” Parker yelled from inside the apartment and Eliot let Hardison herd him inside. It was smart; he wouldn’t want himself at his back either.

When they hit the doorway to the bedroom, Eliot stopped short so fast that Hardison ran into him, making him stumble forward another step. Parker was laying on the bed, one hand lazily working between her legs and her other thumb rubbing over one of her nipples. His mouth went dry at the sight of her fingers sliding in between her slick folds.

Hardison had to nudge him forward before he could force himself to move, to stumble to the edge of the bed and drop down on his knees like he was at an altar. Parker shifted on the bed, pushing herself up and swinging her legs around so that they fell on either side of Eliot’s head. He swayed forward to breathe in the heady musk of her scent before he could stop himself.

He was already so hard that his dick was throbbing in time with the rushing in his ears, and they’d barely touched him. It was probably a good thing no one had their hands on him yet, because he wanted this to last as long as possible, as long as they’d allow it.

“Can I--” he breathed out as Parker’s hand slid through his hair and fisted at the back of his head, and he wasn't sure whether he was going to ask if he could eat her out or get undressed or what. It didn’t matter, because Parker was pressing his head forward and he was eagerly lapping up her juices, running his tongue up her labia and over her clit while she shuddered underneath him.

He was only paying half a mind to Hardison behind him, the sounds of clothing hitting the floor and a drawer opening barely registering. He was too lost in Parker’s sweet taste and the little moans she was letting out every time he did something she liked to pay much attention to what Hardison was doing. For a moment, when Hardison’s hands slipped around his waist and to the front of his jeans, the shock of having someone suddenly right behind him had him tensing. He couldn't stop the thought that that was it, they were going to end things right then and there, from flashing through his mind.

It only took him a split second to realize Hardison was just going to unbutton his jeans, but that was enough for Hardison to stop moving and ask, again, “Is this okay?”

He drew back from Parker, her whined, “Don’t stop,” killing him a little inside.

“Yeah,” he said, and a rough, “Please,” escaped afterward, before Parker’s hand was tightening in his hair and he was leaning back in to hide his embarrassment between her thighs. He slipped a finger into the warm, wet heat of her, slowly sliding it in and out of her cunt. She arched her back and he added a second finger, her hand tightening in his hair.

Hardison started moving his hands again, unbuttoning Eliot’s jeans and easing down the zipper before pulling them and his boxers down to pool around his knees. The first touch of Hardison’s hand on Eliot’s erection had him stuttering his hips forward, an involuntary moan escaping his lips. Parker clenched around his fingers while he laved at her clit.

“I really want to fuck you,” Hardison said in his ear, sending a full body shudder of desire through him.

“While you’re fucking me,” Parker added, and he shivered again.

“There are so many things we want to do to you,” Parker murmured as she let go of his hair and pushed herself away from him. He managed to choke off the disappointed whine before it escaped his throat, but it was a close thing. Instead, he licked his lips, the taste of Parker sweet on his tongue, and nodded. He could feel Hardison pulling away, and used the sudden space to stand and strip off his shirt.

A hollow feeling opened inside him without their hands on his skin, and he had to force himself not to shudder again, for an entirely different reason this time. Instead, he stepped out of his jeans and crawled onto the bed when Parker beckoned, gladly leaning down to kiss her, to let her taste herself and let their tongues tangle.

“God _damn_ that’s hot,” Hardison said from beside them, his voice closer than Eliot expected. He controlled the instinctive flinch and pulled back from the wet slide of Parker’s tongue against his just enough to smirk over his shoulder at Hardison.

What he was about to say died in his throat at the look on Hardison’s face, the naked lust clouding his eyes as he raked them up and down Eliot’s body.

“Like what you see?” Eliot asked, shooting for cocky.

“You got no idea,” Hardison said, reaching out and running a hand through Eliot’s hair and down the side of face. It sent an uncomfortable warm feeling pooling in the pit of his stomach, and when Hardison’s thumb landed on his bottom lip, he sucked it into his mouth.

Parker made soft noise in the back of her throat as he wrapped his tongue around Hardison’s thumb and said, “You should blow him.”

“Yeah,” Hardison said, his voice rough. “Yeah, you should.”

Parker reinforced the idea with a hand on the back of Eliot’s neck and subtle pressure downward. Nothing that he couldn’t ignore if he wanted, but... he didn’t want to. His mouth was watering at the sight of Hardison’s cock, as hard as his and leaking just as much. Hardison had been lazily jacking himself, but stopped and lay back on the bed next to Parker when Eliot turned fully toward him.

“C’mere,” Hardison said, propping himself up a little. Eliot crawled up until he was hovering over him, hoping no one would notice that his arms were trembling a little as they supported his weight.

He kissed Hardison sloppily, the slick sound of their mouths sliding together loud in the quiet room, then kissed down his body and swallowed down his cock. The salty taste of skin and precome was just as mouth-wateringly good as the taste of Parker had been. He couldn’t take it all -- it had been a long time since he’d blown a guy -- but by the way Hardison was fisting the sheets as Eliot bobbed his head up and down, it didn’t matter.

Parker was moving around him on the bed, coming to rest behind him where he couldn’t see her. She smoothed a hand over his ass, grabbing and squeezing, sending a bolt of heat through him. When he went to fist his dick, though, Parker knocked his hand away. He made a disgruntled noise around Hardison’s cock, making Hardison moan and make an abortive thrust up into his mouth.

“Not yet,” Parker said as Eliot’s eyes watered with the effort of not gagging on Hardison’s cock. She squeezed his ass again, drawing a moan out of him. Hardison’s hips made another shallow thrust up into his mouth, and he tried to relax his throat to take it.

“So fucking hot,” Hardison said, voice shaky, as he reached down and ran his thumb along the side of Eliot’s mouth, where his lips were stretched around Hardison's cock. He had to close his eyes at the way his dick throbbed, at the way heart started racing and his stomach clenched.

Parker ran a hand up his side, dropping kisses on his shoulder blade as she did. Her breasts pressed against his back as she draped her body over him, letting him take her weight, and his dick pulsed with want at the feel of her nipples pebbled against the skin of his back, at the need to suck one of those nipples into his mouth and slide his fingers back inside her.

Even though he was on his elbows, his arms were trembling again; his body felt like a wire, strung taut between Hardison in his mouth and Parker on his back.

She moaned a little as she ran her hands over his chest, pausing to tweak his nipples, and he wasn’t sure what made his cock jump more: feeling like his nipples were wired straight to his dick or wondering what noises he could draw out of her if he did the same thing.

He couldn’t reach for his dick again, not with supporting Parker’s weight too, but he wanted to so badly it was almost like a physical pain.

“Eliot,” Hardison gasped out, and Parker pulled on his hair a little, so he pulled off with a pop.

“Yeah?” he said, sounding wrecked.

Parker was toying with his nipples again, sending sparks of pleasure through him and he ground himself against the bed. Hardison’s, “Didn’t want the party to be over quite yet,” was almost lost in the need that was filling Eliot’s body and blurring his vision.

The sharp crack of Parker’s hand on his ass had him jolting forward before he realized what was happening.

“Stop that,” she said, and he had a moment of confused panic where he thought she meant they were going to stop, period, before it cleared in his lust-fogged brain that she just wanted him to stop trying to get himself off against the bed.

Her and Hardison’s bed. Not one that he had the right to. He needed to remember that, no matter how turned on he got, that this wasn’t _his_. This wasn’t his to keep, or his to get comfortable with, or-- This was for them, and when they were done, they would do what they wanted with him.

The thought was enough to bring down his arousal enough that he could think clearly again, and he shrugged Parker off his back. She landed with a bounce and a giggle next to him, pulling his arm until he wasn’t braced over Hardison anymore and was, instead, laying between the two of them.

Hardison turned to lean over him and kiss him again, his tongue delving into Eliot’s mouth, which had automatically dropped open for him. Parker was sliding down Eliot's body, sucking and nibbling at one of his nipples, until he was just gasping into Hardison's mouth, then moving on and swallowing Eliot down to the root.

She was amazing, her mouth velvety and hot, her tongue pressing against the vein at the base of his cock and dragging up, making his head spin and his heart race. When she pulled off, she replaced her mouth with her hand and slowly stroked up and down, so slow he knew he’d never come from it, that if she wanted she could do it forever and he’d just have to lay there and take it.

When she pulled her hand away, he was left humping the air, and could feel the flush of shame burning on his cheeks.

“Will you just-” he started, not sure whether he was going to ask for them to get on with it, or stop teasing him, or please, god, touch him some more, but whatever it was was cut off with a choked moan when Parker slid a lubed finger into his ass.

“Warn a guy next time,” he growled, even as he was pushing back against her hand, welcoming the burn and stretch, using it to ground himself.

“C’mere, baby,” Hardison said, making Eliot glare at him to cover the way he wanted to nuzzle into the hand that Hardison had cupped around his cheek and was using to draw him forward.

“I’m not your baby, Hardison,” he said, his voice breaking in the middle when Parker added a second finger and stroked across his prostate.

“Okay,” Hardison agreed easily, then leaned forward enough to bring their mouths together again.

Eliot shuddered, caught between Parker’s fingers on one end and Hardison’s tongue and hand on the other. White-hot sparks of pleasure shot through him every time Parker pressed down on his prostate and with every slick slide of Hardison’s tongue against his. Hardison was slowly jacking his own cock again, idly running his hand up and down it like he had all the time in the world.

“Could you come just from this?” Parker asked, her fingers stroking across his prostate, sounding almost disinterested in what his answer was going to be. He shuddered again, mindlessly seeking friction as his cock dragged across Hardison’s abs for half a second before Hardison scooted back a little.

“No,” he managed to gasp out between kisses; he’d always needed something actually touching his dick, but he was beginning to think they might be the exception.

Parker made a disappointed noise, but didn’t stop. His hips were circling restlessly, grinding back against her hand and moving forward, cock hitting nothing but air. He'd give almost anything, if only someone would touch his cock. He was so close; he just needed a push over the edge.

When he went to do it himself, Hardison stopped jacking his own cock and grabbed his arm. Eliot could break his hold, easy, could finish himself off easily enough, but something stopped him.

“Not yet,” Hardison said, his voice too kind by half. Eliot couldn’t help but be suspicious that he was buttering him up for something, that he wanted something out of him. He'd give it to them, if only Hardison would tell him what they wanted. At that point he'd do anything, even beg, if that meant someone would touch his cock.

He managed to stay silent and patient, waiting on them to tell him what they wanted, until Parker had three fingers in him.

“Please,” he gasped into Hardison’s mouth as Parker spread her fingers and Hardison rubbed his thumbs across Eliot's nipples. “Please, just-- Don’t--”

He was going to die. They were going to kill him with sex and he was shockingly okay with that. He just needed something, anything, to touch him, and he would come, but they weren’t going to--

“Okay, it’s okay,” Hardison said, rubbing a thumb across Eliot’s cheekbone. He motioned to Parker, saying, “We can fuck him together later,” to her.

“Please,” he choked out again, letting his head drop and hair hide his face. “I need--”

“It’s okay, babe, we got you,” Hardison said, and then Parker was pulling her fingers out of him, making him whine in desperation. He needed something-- needed someone to-- he just needed--

They were pushing him over, switching positions, and he almost sobbed with relief when Hardison slid into him and filled the emptiness Parker had left behind. Parker was soaking wet when she knelt over his face, bringing her clit in line with his mouth. He still had enough presence of mind to run his tongue over her pussy, to press it against her clit until she was moaning with every breath, almost in sync with the short grunts Hardison was letting out as slid his cock in and out of Eliot's ass. And, still, no one was touching his cock.

Parker clamped her knees around his head as she came with a sharp cry, and then finally, _finally_ , Hardison’s hand was on his cock and he was tensing and coming before Hardison even managed a full stroke.

He felt like his bones were melting as Parker climbed off him and slid down the bed. He couldn’t do anything but let Hardison pound into him for the few strokes it took for Hardison to come, too. All he could do was lay there, panting and staring at the ceiling.

Eliot knew he needed to leave, was the thing, because he was still-- He wasn’t sure what they actually _wanted_ from him.

So he was laying there, panting, staring at the ceiling, still not 100% certain that this wasn’t some... some way to make them feel less guilty about taking him out, or something, because while it didn’t seem like something they would do, fucking a murderer that they planned to take out afterward, it didn’t... _not_ seem like something they would do, because really, who the fuck knew how Parker’s mind worked, and she could talk Hardison into going along with lots of crazy plans.

He tried to slip out of bed the way he usually did, because fucking him was one thing, but he couldn’t imagine a world in which they’d want him to stay afterward, especially not since they saw all the disgusting shit he was capable of when given the orders.

But Hardison’s arm tightened around him, his lips moving against Eliot's shoulder when he said, “I don’t think so.”

“What--” he started, his voice rough from the blowjob and the pleading they’d drawn out of him, still shaky with how long they’d kept him on the edge. But then Parker was climbing over Hardison and him, flopping down against Eliot’s side and throwing an arm over him right below Hardison’s.

“We just got you back,” she said. “You’re not disappearing again.”

And that-- “I’m not gonna _disappear_ , Parker,” he said, “I just gotta--”

“Y’all too loud,” Hardison said, and, “Take a damn nap.”

Eliot could feel both their arms, tense across his skin like they were preparing to hold him there if he tried to leave, so he slumped back and let his eyes drift closed because he was fucking _wrecked_ and could really use a quick nap.

“Fine,” he muttered, like it wasn’t exactly what he wanted and couldn’t bring himself to ask for.

When he woke up again, it was from a dream where he was fucked out and floating and Parker was carving into him, Hardison holding a gun cocked and pointed at Eliot’s head as she drew the sharp blade of the knife down his side.

He snapped awake, already panting, a scream strangling him. Parker and Hardison were both sacked out, still half on top of him, but he had to- he had to-

When he tried to slip out from beneath them again, Hardison's arm tightened around him and Parker propped herself up on his chest to watch him, like she hadn't just been asleep. He couldn’t meet their eyes, stared at the ceiling instead and blinked hard.

“Look,” he said. “Look, if you’re doing this just ‘cause-- If this is some way to--” He swallowed hard. “Can you just get it over with already?”

“Get what over with?” Parker asked, and he risked a glance at her face, which seemed honestly confused. But then, she’d spent a lot of time with Sophie over the years.

“Whatever you’re gonna do,” he choked out.

It wouldn’t be a terrible way to go, much better than bleeding out on the floor of a Turkish prison like that one time, or dropped in the desert a hundred miles away from civilization like that other time, or-

“That can be arranged,” Hardison said with a slow smile.

Eliot tensed as Hardison loomed over him, couldn’t quite help it, even as he was trying to just relax and let them do what they needed to. And Hardison’s lips were soft on his, tongue coaxing his mouth open, and Parker’s hands were smoothing over his sides, dipping under the sheets and running over his cock.

He didn’t feel anything, though, but a vague sense of panic. He couldn’t go through that again, couldn't let himself forget why he was there and what they were going to do. He couldn’t let them fuck him and fuck with him until they were bored and eliminated him from the equation. He couldn't--

“Too soon?” Parker asked, and Eliot managed to croak out, “Too soon for what?” as Hardison was sucking on his neck.

“Another round,” Parker said, as Hardison bit down a little and Eliot couldn’t help the noise he made in the back of his throat. Parker laughed a little. “What’d you think I meant? Kick you out? Punch you in the face? Drop you down at the wharf?" She laughed again. "Kill you? St-”

He must have done something when she said _kill you_ , because suddenly she was saying, “Hardison,” in a voice Eliot didn’t recognize, and Hardison was pulling away and looking down at him and Eliot was trying to make sure nothing was showing on his face, that he looked like he was game for another round, even though he didn’t think he could handle more sex if they’re going to-- and Hardison was jerking away and swearing and saying, “You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.”

His side was cold where Hardison had been pressed against him a moment ago, and Parker was pulling away, moving to the edge of the stupidly huge bed, and they were both looking at him with something that wasn’t quite horror and wasn’t quite pity, and he had to stare at the ceiling and blink a couple times.

“You thought we, what, brought you back here to fuck you and then murder you?” Hardison asked, his voice getting higher and higher, and Eliot crossed his arms over his chest, which was the wrong thing to do, because Hardison just continued with, “And you were gonna just _let us_?”

Eliot shrugged. “Seemed fair,” he said, and Parker sounded absolutely outraged when she repeated it.

“Seemed _fair_?” she said. “Seemed fair? Fair for _what_?”

“You--” he swallowed thickly, and pushed himself up into a sitting position and gestured vaguely out the bedroom door. “You saw what I did.”

“We--” Hardison started in a strangled voice, and then was up out of the bed entirely. “No, I am not having this conversation naked. Put some goddamn clothes on.” Eliot’s clothes hit him in the chest and he pulled them on, his limbs heavy and slow with dread.

Hardison was dressed in a flash and slamming out of the room before Eliot had even got his pants on, and Eliot could hear him slamming things around in the kitchen. He turned and Parker was looking at him sadly, and he just couldn’t handle that.

“I didn’t mean-” he started, not sure where he was going with it, but she just shook her head at him and walked away.

It didn’t feel right being in their bedroom without them, so he trudged out to the living room, eying the door as he slipped his boots back on, not bothering to tie them. He was just thinking that maybe-- no, _definitely_ , he should leave, when Hardison was suddenly in his space, pushing him backward onto the couch with an ordered, “Sit,” and thrusting a mug of coffee into his hands.

“Just to be absolutely clear on this,” Hardison said, standing in front of him with his arms crossed, a thunderous look on his face. Eliot wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him look so furious. “You thought were were going to pick you up from the airport, bring you back to our _home_ , m-- have sex with you, and then _murder you_?”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Eliot said, trying for dry and ending up with kind of shaky. “But you gotta admit-”

“No,” Hardison said. “No, you don’t get to talk. You've known us for _six years_ ; do you really think that we'd--"

Hardison stopped, staring at him in horror, and Eliot stared into the cup of coffee, made just the way he liked it, and tried not to let himself shake.

“Well?” Hardison said. “That was not a rhetorical question.”

“You told me not to talk,” Eliot said, quietly, reasonably. Because if he didn’t stay quiet and reasonable, he was going to end up shouting, or even worse, crying, and they didn’t deserve that.

“I--” Hardison said, high and strangled.

“Why?” Parker asked, and for a single, vicious moment Eliot contemplated saying, “because clearly you ain’t interested in what I got to say,” but he knew that wasn’t what she was asking.

“It-” he started, still staring into the coffee instead of looking up at them. He wouldn’t be able to stand seeing the look on their faces, either hatred or pity or-- “You _saw what I did_ , Parker. I’m the kinda guy we usually go after, okay? It-- It made-- It _makes_ sense.”

“We don’t usually kill our marks,” Parker said, and Eliot could imagine Hardison’s current sputtering turning into protests that they never killed them, so he cut that off with a quiet, “Our marks aren’t usually as bad as me.”

Hardison made another strangled noise, and Eliot couldn’t look up, he _couldn’t_ , except Parker’s fingers were under his chin, were forcing his head up until the only option was to look at her, look at the bright, unshed tears in her eyes and the way she was holding herself as still as possible.

“Sometimes,” she said, “you’re pretty dumb, Eliot.”

He flinched reflexively when she started the sentence, but that wasn’t what he was expecting to come after and he didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t know what to say. He risked a glance at Hardison’s face, and Hardison’s looking furious and worried, but there was nothing there that-

“You saw--” he tried again, and Hardison shook his head a little.

“Yeah, we saw the clip reel, do you even want to be here?” Hardison was watching him intently, and waiting, and Parker’s fingers were gentle on his face and he had to bite back the first words he wanted to say with a choked noise, the, “God, yes,” and the, “More than anything.”

Instead, he nodded and carefully put the coffee on the floor next to his feet, because he was afraid the shaking in his hands were going to spill it all over their couch.

“Did you want to have sex with us?” Parker asked, something raw and broken in her voice that he’d never heard before and never wanted to hear again. “Or were you just going along with it because you didn’t have a choice?”

“I did,” he croaked out. “I promise, I wanted--” he forced himself to stop before he gave away too much, gave away everything he wanted and couldn’t have. His arms were clasped around his torso, his own fingers bruising his sides as he pressed them hard against his flesh to stop them from shaking.

That must have been the right answer, because Parker’s fingers were gone from his face and she was sliding onto the couch next to him, and Hardison was sitting down, too, too close, pressed up against his side. It didn’t do anything to fight the chill that had taken up residence within him, but it was better than not having them there.

“You saw--” he tried to say, tried to explain. “I mean, you got to the end, right? To-- to--” and he couldn’t keep going because he was suddenly full of panic at the idea that they only watched some of it, that there were still things left for them to discover, that maybe what he’d thought was the sound of the end of the fiasco in Goiânia, when it all really went off the rails, had been something else entirely, and they were operating under the false assumption that what they’d seen was the worst, and when they found out the rest they’d-

Parker had pried one of his hands from where it was clamped around his ribs and he clutched convulsively at her fingers, and Hardison was doing the same to the other one and then rubbing his free hand up and down Eliot’s back in long, soothing strokes.

“Yeah,” Hardison said. “We watched it all, even though we knew you wouldn’t want us to, which you have every right to be pissed about-”

“I ain’t mad, Hardison,” Eliot said in a shaky voice.

“Maybe you should be,” Parker said on his other side.

“I ain’t-- Jesus, it’s--” He let out a shuddering breath, pulling weakly against their hold, against the hands that were holding his, trying half-heartedly to make them let go, ignoring the relief that welled when they wouldn’t.

“You know,” Hardison said, “there was a pretty catchy soundtrack behind the ones without audio.”

“Don’t,” Eliot said harshly. “Don’t fucking try to... to make light of what I did, Hardison.”

“I’m not,” Hardison said easily. “I’m trying to get you to calm down so you stop crushing my hand.”

For a moment, Eliot was so incandescently full of rage that he forgot that he was the one who’d wronged _them_ , that he wasn’t the injured party there.

“What do you _want_ from me?” he spit out. “I did all that, don’t you get it? No one forced me. No one had a gun to my head, _I did that_. Moreau told me to jump and I didn’t even have to ask how high, okay? It don't matter how much I hated it; I’d do it. And I’d have to do it again if I wasn’t--” except he didn’t know if he was still working with them, did he? As far as he knew, he was out on his ass and was going to find himself working for another guy like Moreau within six months. The thought made him feel lightheaded and sick to his stomach.

“Guess we’ll have to never let you go again,” Parker said, and she sounded almost _cheerful_ and it was too much, he couldn’t deal with that, he had to-- he needed to go, he couldn’t stay there where they were pretending like nothing was _wrong_ , like nothing had changed and he was still the same man they always thought they knew.

“Yeah,” Hardison was saying, his hand never stopping its soothing trail up and down Eliot’s back. “You’re stuck with us for the rest of your life.”

He tore away at that, standing up and knocking over the mug of coffee with his foot, ripping away from their hands and their closeness and their words like if he just put enough physical distance between them, they wouldn’t be promising things he couldn’t actually have.

“What the fuck don’t you understand?” he snarled and picked one of the less bad ones that he remembered from the video, because ‘less bad’ didn’t mean ‘not horrific’. “I tortured that family in Tiruchirappalli for _days_. They’d pass out and I’d bring ‘em round and I’d-- Just to make a _point_ , just to make sure Ranga knew who was boss and that he couldn’t- They begged me to let them die and I-- I--” his breath was tearing out of his lungs in great, whooping gasps as he talked, and Parker and Hardison were staring at him with wide eyes, and he thought that yeah, now they got it, now they got that he was no good, that they should put him down or let him go.

He didn’t shrink back when they got up, just kept talking, moving on to the clip that had come right after that one, “And he wanted them _humiliated_ in Bath, so me and my crew, we-- we cut holes in them, making sure to miss anything that would kill them and we--”

He didn’t flinch when Hardison’s arms come up, didn’t raise his fists when Parker grabbed him, waited for them to tear him apart as he breathed in sobbing breaths, except Parker was tucking herself against him and Hardison’s arms were locked around him, and Hardison was murmuring, “We know, man, we know. It’s okay, we know, and it ain’t-- What you did ain’t right, but we _know_.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliot gasped out, his voice ragged. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I won’t-- you should-- you can--”

“Eliot, man,” Hardison said, and his voice was so kind and gentle that Eliot could feel himself shattering as it washed over him. “You should shut up now.”

And Eliot could do that, if that was what they needed. If they needed him to pretend that he never did any of that, needed him to never remind him about what he was, he could-- he could do that. He just--

“We know what you did, back then,” Parker was saying. “And a lot of it is pretty gross, but we know who you are _now_ , and you wouldn’t do that anymore. You won’t have to do that ever again, okay?”

“Yeah,” Hardison was saying. “We got you now, you’re gonna be okay.”

Eliot sagged against them, finally, feeling wrung out and used up, let them strip him down to boxers and maneuver him into the bed, let Hardison grab a tablet and come sit next to him, running fingers through his hair. Let Parker curl up with him, let her put one of her hands over his heart, let her kiss his shoulder and tell him to relax, let her believe that it was all gonna be okay.

And, yeah, maybe-- maybe he could believe that too. Maybe as long as he was with them, things were going to be okay. Maybe he would get to keep his promise and stay with them until the day he died.

Eliot closed his eyes, and let himself believe.

THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: It is heavily implied in this that Eliot's raped people for Moreau. Like heavily implied. Like just this side of outright stated.


End file.
